millennialgriefrituals

[millennialgriefrituals]

Oddly Specific Grief Activities

I spent a lot of time looking for guidance on things to do while grieving. Many articles provided a good foundation, but I still struggled to find direction in ideas like “watch a movie” or “write what you’re feeling”. Trial and error—and then, remembering what you even did—can be difficult when you’re already emotionally drained. I will continually edit this post to track the specific things that worked best for me.

Updated 3/24/23

Watch a movie

Stand-up comedy specials – for when I needed something low-stakes, approachable, and couldn’t give attention to a backstory

Heist movies – good for getting through the worst time of day, which, for me, was the evening

Mockumentary-style TV shows – in addition to The Office and Parks and Rec, Peep Show and Zach Stone is Gonna Be Famous are absolute gems

Write what you’re feeling

Prompt ideas

What time of day is the hardest for me? Why?

What time of day is the easiest for me? Why?

Where does the grief hurt in my body?

What are some of the rituals I kept with the person or pet I’m missing?

What are some ways I might honor those rituals even though the person or pet is no longer here?

What is my favorite memory that best captures their personality?

What’s the funniest thing they ever did?

What did their hair/fur look like when the sun hit it?

What is my favorite spring/summer/fall/winter memory of them?

What is their version of heaven?

[millennialgriefrituals]

It's been a week since March 16, 2023, the day we said goodbye to Boz. I don't remember what I was doing on March 16, 2022, fully unaware of the countdown clock that had been set. He stayed with us for a long time, even as his body started to fail. 402 weeks with him, one week without him.

It unsettles me to think about time this much. I didn’t count days or hours like this before, like notches on stone column. And yet, I am not only fixated on 9:40am, March 16, 2023, but the exact location of Boz’s bed on my living room floor. It’s the place where he slept and dreamed and ate snacks, and it’s where he died in my arms.

What has that 3-by-3-foot square of earth seen? Could I take a coring tool and dig up the sediment layers of memory? Millions of years of rock, ocean, primordial soup. Forests, or perhaps a redwood that stood for hundreds of years before it was struck down by lightning. Back when storms here were more frequent, back before indigenous cultures called this land home for centuries. Babies are born. Seasonal fires produce char and compost. A barrel of gunpowder falls off a wagon and the stain of saltpeter takes years to fully wash away. Seasons pass. A bureaucrat stands in this spot and assigns a ZIP code. Another baby, crawling on the floor of a newly-built townhome. It’s the spot where she stands, seventeen years later, because it’s where the lighting is best for her father to take prom photos. Years of quiet domesticity come and go. A couple moves in and their dog picks the spot as his favorite patch of sun.

I miss Boz, physically. He entered this month alive, warm, affectionate, real. His body ends the month as ashes in the Pacific Ocean. I thought our house would feel disconcertingly quiet without him, but he was always a fairly quiet dog. There are no auditory cues that might stop me from reflexively looking over to where he slept, before I belatedly remember that he’s no longer here. The physical loss of my dog is a clean break, a binary: he was here and now he’s not. The 3-by-3-foot square of space he occupied is once again empty. It doesn’t matter to me whether the dust of his bones traveled ten miles or a thousand, has settled in a coral reef or is hurtling through a polar ocean current—his body is not here.

And yet, each new day carries a sadness because I have equated time and distance. One week will turn into two. A month. A year. Five years. Twenty. My objective is to approach my memory of Boz in the same way as his physical loss, inverted: it shouldn’t matter how much time has passed—his soul is still here. I don’t want to preserve my memories of Boz in amber. I want to engage them, keep them alive, feed them, nurture them.

I scrolled mindlessly through my phone calendar and found that March 16 is a Thursday again in the year 2152. It was initially eerie to see such a faraway date in the banality of my phone’s calendar format—a memento mori for the digital age. The feeling melted into an oddly comforting sense of insignificance, the kind you get from laying on the floor, getting rocked to sleep by a train, or watching a classmate pencil in their portion of a shared assignment. I will take this as encouragement.